The Mystery of Josh Hamilton

Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today in this Baseball Detective brainstorming sesh as we try and figure out just what in tarnation is going on with Josh Hamilton. Oh, and please help yourself to the bagels and coffee I brought for “brain food.” Heh heh. Anyway, once you’re settled, we’ll get back to the business at hand.

I don’t want to belabor the point, but Josh Hamilton is great at baseball. He’s just got those giant, muscley arms, fluid motions, and that crop of curly hair atop his head—he’s a baseball adonis. My wife sure likes him, if you catch my drift. But we are tasked we need to figure out why he was hitting .404 on May 16th in the year 2012, and has been hitting .210/.286/.420 ever since.

Here’s the evidence at hand:

Hamilton himself has said, and sorry for reading directly off my notes, “When the time is right, I’ll be honest with you, you’ll be right in the loop. I’ve been shown a lot of things over the past week. There’s disobedience and there’s obedience to God. I’ve been being disobedient. It may be a small thing to you, but it’s a big thing to him. There’s consequences. It’s like a father and a kid. There are disciplines. You guys can chew on that and think about it.”
This was followed with Ron Washington coming out and saying that it’s not an injury and it’s certainly not physical, so we’ll have to wait for Hamilton himself to step forward. That’s all we have to go on.

Before, I open up the floor, let me just pull out my trusty whiteboard (wish I could get one of those fancy CNN video boards, but hey), and open up my pen. Okay. Things that could be up with Josh Hamilton. Ideas, anyone?

Yes, you? Injuries? Well, I can put it on the board, but unless Ron Washington is a red herring, am I using that right, I think we can set that one aside.

Uh-huh, you in the back. Did you say alien abduction? Well, I guess that’s within the realm of possibility, but—no, I don’t think demonic possession is any more likely. Yes, I did see the Exorcism of Emily Rose, and personally, thought it was overrated. But we’re getting off topic.

Substance abuse? Did I hear someone say substance abuse? Geez, that’s a little dangerous to just guess at, but that’s the first thing on everyone’s mind. Hamilton did fall off the wagon over the offseason and you could relate it back to that “obedience” quote of Hamilton’s, but that’s a pretty big accusation to make. You would also think that the Rangers would have put Hamilton on the restricted list and tried to get him help as soon as any issues like that came up. I guess we’re all thinking it, but that doesn’t mean I like to.

What’s that? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. Family issues, did you say? Yeah, I guess we can put that on there.

Oh, I could put mechanical issues down. But then again, why would anyone be so secretive about mechnical issues? Listen, this is why we’re here. To talk things out, get them in the open. There are no such things as bad ideas.

God dammit, John, I told you, I wouldn’t be writing demonic possession on the board. No, no, I’m not going to do it. If you’re not going to be helpful, you can just leave.

Well, yikes, guys, we’ve already used up our time for the room and we didn’t get anywhere close to solving this mystery. I’ll have the meeting notes up on my site: thebaseballdetective.com and if you want to email me with any further leads, please do so at baseballdetective@earthlink.net.

Stick around if you want for the next group that will be discussing “A Darker Shade of Grey.” Gotta say, that’s my favorite of the bunch. See you all next week.